Proceedings of the von Wright conference at the Center for Intedisciplinary Studies in Bielefeld, April 26 to 27, 1996. Georg Henrik von Wright, born 1916, is an important analytical philosopher of the 20th century.

Humanitarian Interventions - that sounds nice; much nicer than wars, battles and use of military force. Foremost, the phrase makes you think of the delivery of sanitary goods, medication, of soup-kitchens. Here we are not supposed to think of interventions of this kind; we have to have humanitarian interventions in mind which are humanitarian intervention-wars. (I) At exactly what point is the use of military force a humanitarian intervention? What is the humanitarian aspect of those interventions? Their occasion? Their motive? Their alleged as well as their actual consequences? (II) At exactly what point are humanitarian intervention-wars morally justifiable? Are they justifiable even if they are wars of aggression breaching international law? And finally: (III) Was the war which was presented to us as the paradigmatic example of a humanitarian-intervention-war, that is: the war in Kosovo in the spring of 1999 (with over 37,000 bombing missions), really justifiable as a humanitarian intervention? Many of us wanted to believe so at the time. Does our ex ante judgement hold today in an ex post reflection? And which lessons for the future should we learn from the success or failure of this humanitarian war? These are the questions proposed in this book; therefore, it is concerned with problems of semantics (part I), problems of moral assessment (part II) and with the moral, legal and political conclusions we draw from our experiences with the war in Kosovo, our primary example of a humanitarian intervention (part III). International experts in the areas of philosophy, international law, sociology and peace studies debated these questions vigorously for several days. This is the resulting volume.

We are supposed to wage war against Terrorism - but exactly what we are fighting against in this war, there is nearly no consensus about. And, much worse, nearly nobody cares about this conceptual disaster - the main thing being, whether or not you are taking sides with the good guys. This volume is an analytical attempt to end this disaster. What is Terrorism? Are terrorist acts to be defined exclusively on the basis of the characteristics of the respective actions? Or should we restrict such actions to acts performed by non-state organisations? And, most important, is terrorism already by its very nature to be morally condemned? But, having a clear idea of what Terrorism is, would be only the beginning. Rational moral assessment still needs two further components: The relevant facts; and the relevant values and norms. Now, in a field where systematic disinformation has been even proclaimed to be the official policy, facts are obviously very hard to get at. This volume is mainly interested in Ethics: What's wrong with Terrorism? And what is morally right or morally wrong, respectively, with all the different means of Counter-Terrorism? What are the moral boundaries for waging war agains terrorism? What are the right ways of dealing with terrorists? And what about the alleged anti-terrorism wars on Afghanistan and Iraq? With contributions from Marcelo Dascal, Tomis Kapitan, Daniel Messelken, Seumas Miller, Olaf L. Mueller, Igor Primoratz, Charles P. Webel, Per Bauhn, Rudiger Bittner, C. A. J. (Tony) Coady, Haig Khatchadourian, Georg Meggle, Peter Simpson, Carolin Emcke, Ralf Groetker, Laurence Lustgarten, Thomas Mertens, Aleksandar Pavkovic, Filimon Peonidis, Janna Thompson, Veronique Zanetti"

There is a long tradition in the philosophy of explaining the concept of meaning in terms of reference of the thing that our sign signifies. At the latest since Wittgenstein, meaning has been explained with the formula meaning=use, where one distinguishes between how one uses something and for what purpose one uses something. The author shows that this dichotomy between the how and the purpose of use can be unified. He does this by first investigating the concept of the purpose of use and then reconstructs the use-how by means of the concept of convention. Finally, the author demonstrates how to traditional referential semantics can be justified on the basis of the theory developed here."

Dieser Almanach dokumentiert die Ergebnisse des Projekts "Praktische Ethik in Deutschland - ihre inhaltlichen und institutionellen Perspektiven." Er informiert uber die praktisch-ethischen Arbeitsschwerpunkte, Forschungsvorhaben und Veroffentlichungen von Wissenschaftlern und Institutionen im deutschsprachigen Raum, vorrangig im Bereich der Philosophie, aber auch in den Bereichen Theologie, Medizin, Technik, Naturwissenschaften, Umwelt und Wirtschaft. Am Ende des Almanachs befinden sich zwei Register. Im ersten Register sind die Wissenschaftler entsprechend ihren Arbeitsschwerpunkten den Themengebieten Medizin, Umwelt, Technik, Politik und Wirtschaft zugeordnet.Aus dem zweiten Register ist zu entnehmen, wer zu welchen speziellen Themen forscht. Daruber hinaus enthalt der Almanach eine Auswahlbibliographie zur Praktischen Ethik."